Anthology
by Ace in the Sol
Summary: A series of (usually unconnected) oneshots that don't necessarily deserve their own fic. Chapter 4: Elias spends a quiet moment with his sons and reflects.
1. Double Dog, Triple Dog

"What did they _do_ to you?" I ask 'calmly', watching my sons beat the shit out of my old teammate almost dispassionately. Not that I'm not boiling inside, dying to know what the Federation did to warp the greatest man I've ever known like this. Rorke knows I'm tense. He knows _me_. Probably better then I know myself, If i'm being totally honest. David is probably far too into it, grunting as he drives his fist into the elder's flesh. He hates Rorke with the same fire I once trusted the man with. Logan remains stoic as always. Clinical. Detached in all the ways he really isn't. My little boy always _did_ want to preform on Broadway. In a better world, he may very well have. Logan has _always_ hated interrogation, for all his skill at it. Too personal, he'd whisper, too intimate. You learn far too much about a person when they're under the knife, Dad. And that's true enough. The big man gasps once, trying to draw breath into his aching lungs, and then decides that the appearance of 'weakness' isn't tolerable.

"The same thing _you_ did," Rorke spits with wild, hateful eyes, "They set me free." He's got a scar on his eye that I don't remember, long and ugly. His lips are thinner, too. Worry lines deeper. We're getting old. But we're not there just yet. "You taught me a long time ago; Ghosts don't break," a spark of rage lights a fire in his eyes, glittering spitefully in the low light. "Now," I drawl like this isn't affecting me at all, "I'm gonna ask you one more time-" Gabe, _Rorke_ cuts me off with an angry noise. " _Everyone_ breaks, Elias!" he snarls at me, and something like pity curls in my gut for the briefest of moments before he choke-slams it into the dirt and kills it with a prejudice. "Why don't you ask your old buddy, Ajax?" he taunts, and it's everything I have in me not to shoot him then and there. "Well," he continues mockingly, "if he were still with us." Ajax was our _brother_! A member of the closest knit team under the sun. We were a _family_. We had each other's backs, and Rorke had stabbed him in his.

I shoulder past David roughly, checking him harshly as I try and fail to contain my fury. There are _lines_ \- lines that a man should never cross. Years ago, Rorke would have killed a man for disrespecting a fallen brother. But then he's hardly himself any more. "Grab his chair!" It's a harsh sound that comes from my mouth. Almost foreign. Logan hesitates for a fraction of a second, and rage has made me impatient. "Bring that bastard over here!" I order, and my younger son starts into action. Both of my boys seize a shoulder, the chair legs grinding against the metal floor with an ugly groan. And I slam the button to open the hatch. It whirs as the mechanics spring to life, wind roaring in my ears. Overpowering the booming heartbeat in my ears. There was a tiny, hopeful voice in me that had been whispering that maybe, just maybe my best friend could be saved. Redeemed. It's silent now, dead maybe. Ground into dust under the heel of an impostor.

Whoever the man in front of me is, he sure as shit isn't my brother. Not anymore. The wind is pulling at my shorn hair, beckoning. Pulling. My boys are still shoving that chair forward, the awful grinding lost in the whirlwind of air tearing around us with a vengeance. I watch a few papers go soaring out into the ether, never to be seen again. Nothing important, I'm sure. I can tell by the ramrod straight line of my old friend's spine that he's nervous. He _knows_ me, but that's a double edged sword. I know _him_ , too. Or at least I knew the man he used to be. And this, it seems, is a remnant of that man. Gabe was always the type to make himself big and loud when he was frightened- no matter how small that fear. The bigger he seemed, the louder he was, the safer he felt. And some things never change. "So _this_ is how it ends, Elias?" Rorke roars over the cacophony. "You gonna throw me outta this plane?"

"You're going to tell me all about that dig site in San Diego," I tell him, knowing full well what his range of responses was. Unfortunately for me, I knew an answer wasn't in the cards for us. Rorke might have been afraid, but submission would never come from him. And sure as shit not to me. He'd sooner die, and we both knew it. I've moved away from the wall and the button, now. Close enough to see the beads of sweat on his brow as my boys push him past me. His cheek is already bruising. His grey t-shirt is sweat drenched at the collar- probably pitted out too. The reek of B.O. is, thankfully, hidden in the wind. I knew Rorke on a visceral level. Down to the very bones. I was _sure_ of what his responses would be like, and maybe that's why what he actually said hurt so bad. "What, you gonna _drop_ me Lieutenant? _Again_?" My head jerks back instinctively, like he's actually, physically struck me.

Silence reigns for a long few seconds. An eternity of moments lost to the roaring of the wind and the satisfied smirk on his face. Like he was a big man, real tough. Smarter then everyone else. I felt frozen. And then time snapped back into hyper-speed, my hand flying, open-palmed, to smack him across his stupid, sweaty face. "How fucking _dare_ you?" I shriek and even though I can't see it, I know my face is an ugly, twisted amalgam of rage and disbelief. Rorke's eyes are wide, a red mark blossoming on the right side of his face from the force of my umbrage. His mouth is hanging open in surprise. If I thought I knew what his reactions would be, then he thought the same about me. And _neither_ of us was expecting that. "How dare you?" I screech again, voice harsh and raw and real. Alive. There are lines. There are _lines_ we do not _cross_ , that _no one_ crosses! And Rorke had taken a flying fucking leap over one of them.

"I loved you!" I snarl in his incredulous face, not thinking. Just feeling. This close, I can see his pores. Feel his breath. "I _loved_ you! You were my _friend_! My _brother_!" And he says nothing. Just... gapes at me like he's never actually seen me a day in his life. My chest is heaving with the force of my breaths now, and I hear David say 'Dad,' quietly. Gently. I can _feel_ Merrick moving toward us without even looking, so I throw my hand up and out to stop him. " _That_ ," I grind out, face flushed with wrath, "was a shit situation, and you _know_ it! What the hell was I _supposed_ to do, huh? Kill us all?" _That_ wakes him up, and suddenly we're pretty much nose to nose. His eyes are a black pit, swirling with a myriad of emotions that I can _barely_ parse through. Rage, yeah, and hurt. Confusion deep enough to drown in. Rorke's angry; hurting and confused and betrayed. He wants to hate me so badly that I can practically taste it on the air.

He opens his mouth to retort, and I grab his awful canvas jacket and pull. Pull so hard he would've come right out of the chair if not for me in his way. " _No_ , Rorke," I spit. "You're gonna tell me what _you_ would have done differently, or you're going to _shut your fucking mouth_ for once in your goddamn life!" And then I shove him as I move away, chair teetering dangerously close to tipping him over. Logan dives forward and steadies it. Keeps our esteemed guest from going flying through thin air. I see it just as I'm about to turn around and slam the door closed again. It's a Federation Y-8, rising out of the clouds (somewhat ironically) like a ghost. Logan darts back and away from the yawning mouth of the door, eyes wide, and Rorke is still staring at me, brows furrowed like I'm a puzzle he just can't work out. The gunship is flanked by four f-15's, and I'm speechless. It's all about to go to hell. I really should have known better, but I wasn't thinking straight when I stepped on-board the plane and saw Rorke in person.

And then Logan pulls his handgun and tries to go one-on-one with a fucking gunship. He lets a few loose before the Federation aircraft launches four tethers, causing ours to practically drop right out of the sky. I cling on just long enough to see several black-clad Federation special operatives board before I go careening. I flail in the air for a moment, spinning and flipping uncontrollably, and I get one last look at Rorke, hanging onto that damn chair. Staring at me. My skin crawls under the weight of his gaze, and I force myself to roll over and yank on the ripcord of my parachute. The harness tugs at me roughly, bouncing me up like a balloon before I drift aimlessly downward. There are only _three_ other parachutes below me- Merrick, Keegan, Hesh. I hope for the pilot's sake that he's already dead and not just unconscious. Nasty, messy way to go, if not. My heart jumps into my throat as I realize that I can't see Logan- that he was still gripping the floor of the plane like a lifeline last I saw him. I force myself not to look up. He's an adult. He'll be okay. I just have to believe that.

* * *

A request from GhostlyMax, who wanted a fic using the phrase "How fucking dare you?" I hope this was everything you dreamed of, lil buddy. Please leave a review! They make my day, and generally make writing much more enjoyable!


	2. Old Man

He blinks awake, head throbbing in time to his heartbeat, and immediately shuts his eyes against the bright sun with a whine of misery. It's so _loud_ , and it hurts _so_ _much_. A few blurry figures swim in and out of his vision for a second as his ears ring. "Uh?" he manages unintelligently, brows slowly drawing together. A few things stop swimming, but it's a little while longer until everything is steady again. There's a man above him- several, in fact. Three of them are wearing the same thing. A uniform, he surmises. The other is shirtless, save for some bloodied bandages wrapped tightly around his chest. The fourth man is bigger then the rest of the men standing around him, and much paler. In skin tone, but also with a terrifying bloodlessness. Are you okay, he tries to ask, and finds himself mumbling incoherently- a faint line of drool dribbles from one corner of his mouth, and he wrinkles his nose disgustedly. He tries to reach up and wipe it away, and the three matching men go _wild_. The fourth... smirks? And says something that he hears but doesn't seem to comprehend. He passes out again.

Then he drifts. In and out, for how long he doesn't know. A lot of the time he sees that fourth man, still wearing his black do-rag, but not always. He always sees doctors, though. White coats and antiseptic. The word burns itself into him before he knows what to think. Mostly he moans at them when he wakes, body too heavy and stupid with sleep to obey properly. A few times he manages a word or two, like 'Where?' or 'Who?'. The doctors, the little doctors... nurses. The nurses coo at him, placating in a language he doesn't understand, and fiddle with a stand covered in wires. A faint beeping is a constant. At first he's never awake for longer then a minute or two, just drifting in and out, ebbing and flowing. Waxing and waning. He doesn't dream, but sometimes there are bright, sharp, confusing flashes of color that whiz by until he wakes with a drowsy groan.

He wants to say that first there was darkness, unending darkness, but he supposes he must just have been sleeping. There are voices, in-between patches of darkness. At first, they fade before he can understand more then a word or two. "-stable, but," an unknown voice explains to someone out of sight. This time, he hadn't managed to open his eyes. Then, an indeterminate time later, "-the doctor in question-" and then a wave of exhaustion he fights through just to hear "-licence revoked." Next comes a woman's gentle murmur, "-out of the coma," briefly followed by a deep, rumbling "Good." before the dark swallows him. Later there are almost whole sentences, among the long patches of sleep. His head feels full of fog, far too heavy to lift from to downy pillow it's laid on. He's usually awake a little longer then he was before, able to open his eyes and peer blearily at the room around him.

"Where am I?" he asks once, and the nurse toying with the IV stand startles before smiling at him. Her teeth are a little too bright, and a little too sharp. She speaks to him in bland tones, and he does not understand. She presses a button on the stand, and he hears a light hiss. Within moments, a sharp, throbbing pain in his arm fades under a hazy cloud. He thinks that he's grateful, even though she hasn't actually answered his question. There's still a faint pain in his head, but even that is fading. "Where...? Where-ere-ere? I'm?" he stutters, tongue tripping over itself. And then he passes out again. The next time he wakes up it's far too brief to understand what's really going on, but there are people standing near him. Talking. He remembers, vaguely, answering two questions before passing out halfway through the answer to the third. The next few snatches of wakefulness are much the same- he supposes it must be the same day, since it's the same doctors.

"-severe post-traumatic Retrograde Amnesia, though without him being lucid for more then a few minutes-" one man says, and another man mumbles indistinctly somewhere to his left. Suddenly, he's waking up. It feels lighter, his body still hurts but it feels so much better then before. He sighs airily, blinking himself awake. The first thing he understands is that he's in a hospital. There's a soft, steady beeping in his ears. A glance to his left reveals a window- it's not open, but the sunlight is filtering in. Quiet voices, speaking a language he doesn't recognize, play their rolls in a sitcom on a television. He frowns briefly, before turning his head to the left and meeting a man's eyes. "Good morning, sunshine," this new contender drawls, lazy and teasing, and he blinks at the other in confusion. "Sorry," he rasps, voice rough with ill-use, "do I... _know_ you?"

The man, clad in a well-loved t-shirt and a canvas jacket, laughs. He winces, ears ringing. It was so _loud_ in the quiet room. His companion coughs awkwardly, before giving him an utterly _loaded_ look. "The real question is do you know who _you_ are?" And his head jerks up, indignation opening his mouth because of _course_ he knows his name, knows who he is. And then he freezes. Stares down at his hands. Swallows. Dithers, shies away from the answer, tries desperately to recall just the least little thing. Finally, he gives a shuddering laugh. "No," he whispers, struggling not to panic. Someone on the TV starts crying profusely. The strange man sitting next to him grins broadly, confusing him for the few seconds the too-sharp smile lingers. "That's okay," he says, "the doctors thought you might have amnesia. 'S why I'm here after all." Oh, okay, he thinks to himself, no wonder he wasn't concerned.

"Who better to help you remember then your own old man?"

* * *

Or: Rorke lies to amnesiac!Logan, and convinces him that he's Logan's father. Anyway, it doesn't deserve it's own fic. It's only around 1,000 words, and I don't really want to continue it from this point. You're all welcome to the idea, though.


	3. Slice of Life

"When using my knife I will always cut away from my body, not toward it," Logan recites sourly as Elias wraps a neon green bandaid around his freshly abused thumb- he's got a rainbow on his hands, and the last Batman bandage they'd had in the house was starting to peel up at the edges like the spine of a worn out story book. He shuffles uncomfortably when his dad kisses his 'booboo', cheeks pinking at Rorke's snort of amusement. The big man found the whole situation rather amusing- little flesh wound excluded, of course. "I will never cut towards another person," he continues, still sitting on the bar stool at the counter as his dad tosses the bandaid's paper wrapper in the trashcan- the lid spins around and around where Elias had used too much force, making the blond boy smile faintly. "I don't hear any knife safety rules, Logan," the man chides not unkindly at his pause, flopping down in a wooden chair at the kitchen table.

"If I drop my knife, I will let it fall and not attempt to catch it and risk injury," Logan grumbles swinging his feet slightly. He just knew his dad was going to take his knife for this. It wasn't even that big of a cut! But his dad always got weird when Logan cut himself by accident. Of course, the six other colorful bandaids wrapped around his digits that just happened to be there for the exact same reason might have had something to do with Elias' displeasure, but this was perhaps a leap of logic that required a maturity that Logan did not yet have. "I will never run with my knife." A petulant foot kicks the island with a dull thud. "I will never point my knife at anyone." _Thud_. "I will never throw my knife for any reason, especially not to give it to someone." _Thud_. Logan pulls his leg back to kick it again and a calloused hand grabs it, holding it hostage while its owner whines and tries to pull it back.

"Let go!" he grumps, folding his arms in a wholly ineffective attempt to look menacing. It doesn't work- in fact, it has the opposite of the desired effect. Gabriel smirks at him, squeezes his heel almost fondly, and stares directly into his eyes. Brown meet brown for an awkward moment. Then Logan starts struggling to free his captured foot at the exact second the man lets go of it- causing his foot to shoot forward and kick the counter at full force. "Ow!" Logan shrieks, knee leaping up as he puts his foot on the seat of the stool to examine his abused toes." _Shit_ , kid," Gabriel exclaims, "I'm sorry." Blinking away the wetness in his eyes, Logan starts up with his knife safety again in a tight voice, massaging his foot in misery. "I- I will keep my knife folded or sheathed when carrying or storing it." A warm, heavy palm drops onto the blond boy's shoulder, and he tenses instinctively.

"I'm sorry, Logan," his pseudo-uncle repeats softly, but Logan resolutely ignores him, nose reddened. Elias sighs from his spot at the table, still seated. "I will not use my knife on any electrical stuff," Logan mumbles, still holding his foot with one hand while the other had crept up to wrap its fingers in his t-shirt, "I will keep my knife sharp so it's less likely to slip and hurt me." Finally he lets his leg down, wrapping his other arm around himself and staring at his rainbow collection of bandages. Finally Elias stands up again, moving over to his younger son and hefting him into his arms like he weighed little more than the paper weight he used to ignore the papers he didn't want to fill out. Finally Gabriel steps back and away, looming in the corner of the kitchen near the refrigerator looking much like a wet cat left out in the rain. "Almost done, kiddo," Elias tells his son, and Logan buries his face in the nape of the man's neck- embarrassed over how much his foot had stung, or perhaps over how he had reacted. Instead of swallowing the pain, reacted.

"I will use my knife in well lit places so I can see what I'm doing," he continues, voice muffled by the soft cotton of a worn t-shirt his father seldom wore because it reminded him of her. "I will keep my knife clean, and if the knife has one especially the locking mechanism." It used to smell like her, Logan knows. Now it smells like laundry detergent. His finger hurts, still. And then Gabriel speaks again, voice deep like the ocean and soft as the receding tide- like he's seen something he thinks maybe he shouldn't have. Like he knows who gave his father this shirt and wishes he didn't. They have bad days, still. But Gabriel speaks. "Will you forgive me if I buy you ice cream?" he asks, and Logan's head jerks up fast enough to startle a laugh from a melancholy mouth- ice cream is a magic word. And 'I'm sorry' word. And sometimes it's an 'I miss you and don't know what to do' word. So Logan says 'yes' fast enough to outstrip a race horse, and tries to wiggle down from safety itself- a pair of arms it has not yet occurred to him will one day cease to hold him. And Elias says

"Don't think you're finished yet, Logan." The groan the boy gives is long and deep, eyes rolling to share a conspiring look with Gabriel as he grumbles the last two parts of his punishment as quickly as he can manage, running the words together. "I won't use my knife as a tool for anything that a knife wasn't meant for, and if I injure myself I will always get help immediately!" He rushes out in one breath, squirming to get down and racing to find his shoes. His father is the kind of guy who actually likes vanilla by itself. Gabriel is the sort that likes banana splits. Logan just wants as much ice cream as he can trick his uncle into buying him. Which turns out to be a lot. And then his belly hurts because he definitely ate way too much ice cream, but it's not his fault because Uncle Gabe said he'd only get him what he wanted if he promised to eat the whole thing, so he did. And if he vomits melted ice cream all over the back seat of the man's car, well at least he isn't crying any more.

Uncle Gabe just says he'll make Keegan clean it up later.

(Elias does, in fact, confiscate Logan's knife for a whole two weeks.)

* * *

You know who you are and why this was written. Utilize caution, you knuckle-head. Also, sorry. I got sad and made it sad by accident.


	4. Chapter 4

He isn't old. Full stop, he isn't. But Elias would say that he's old _enough_. For this, at least, for reminiscing in the dark.

There's been a lot of that, lately, among all of the remaining old guard.

Something in the air feels final, makes them all feel like bunch of geezers his boys joke they are. Fifty-one isn't old. But god, today it sure feels like it. David and Logan are propped against the wall, one pair of legs splayed out, the other has one bent at the knee. Their heads had drifted together maybe twenty minutes ago. Faces slack with sleep and dirty with a day's grime. And in David's case, a little paint, too.

Elias watches them sleep for a long minute, snorting quietly when Logan drools onto his brother's jacket. They're grown. It's crazy to say it, crazier to believe, but they're adults. It still feels like it was only yesterday that Joanna was pregnant with David. God, he hadn't been ready for fatherhood back then. Wasn't even ready for it when _Logan_ came around, so small he nearly fit in the palm of Elias' hand. Logan had scared the shit out of him; David had been a big boy from the outset, but Logan had been a few weeks early and it showed.

Not that he hadn't made up for his size with his sheer volume. A smile pulls at the corner of Elias' mouth. Laying flat on his back and singing with the baby on his chest had been one of the only ways to shut Logan up. Elias had fallen asleep on the living room floor more times than he cared to count.

His knees creak in time with the wooden chair as he stands up, and the boys' faces twitch in unison. He hushes them quietly, same as he'd done when they were still babies. Even after all this time, it works like a charm. They both relax at the sound of his voice, David sighing, and suddenly Elias is so full of love that he could just about die from it.

He would die for this, die for _them_ in a heartbeat. There was no length too great to go for them, no mountain too high, no ocean too wide. If Elias lived every day for the rest of forever just for them, he'd still burn to give them more.

He isn't old, but they're grown. They aren't babies anymore, but they'll _always_ be his babies, and he'd _laughed_ at his mother when she'd said the same about him, didn't, _couldn't_ understand it at the time. Elias brushes some hairs out of Logan's face as he drifts closer to them, pushing down the part of him that says it's against regulation. They shouldn't be sleeping here on the floor in his 'office', but they'd fallen asleep where they were after hours of talking and laughing and generally distracting him from his work. Logan went down first and he'd laughed with his firstborn, but it had been gentle. Fond. David had lasted another half an hour, jaws occasionally cracking wide open with a yawn, but mostly maintaining quiet conversation until he drifted off mid-sentence.

After a moment's deliberation, Elias carefully hefts Logan into his arms. A blond head thunks against his collarbone, same as it always has, and a nose tucks into the side of his neck. There's something holy here, he thinks inexplicably, and his eyes burn a little. The halls are dark, only the dimmest lights on near the ceiling, and the warmth of the low lighting reminds him of campfires and sticky little kid hands clinging to his shirt.

Logan's sheets must be cold, because he grumbles and pouts in his sleep. Elias smooths the crease between those eyebrows with one broad thumb as he pulls the blankets up to his son's chin the way he likes them. Funny to think that he'd once spent thirty solid hours staring at his sleeping baby, wondering. Logan had been born early, born small, but he sure as hell made up for it in his teenage years. God, keeping him clothed had been a nightmare- he'd grown out of his clothes every day for two weeks, to say nothing of the _shoes_. Elias had given up on buying clothes and just thrown his own at the gawky kid until he leveled off.

He never did get as tall as his brother, but six foot one was by no means a diminutive stature. Speaking of his brother... Elias turns and heads for the door again, pausing at a sleepy croak.

"Dad?" Logan mumbles, still somewhere between dreaming and waking.

"Go back to sleep, Lou," he soothes, "Time for resting eyes."

A few hazy blinks follow, before his son mumbles an affirmative and burrows deeper into his blankets.

David is still propped against the wall, but he's brought his knees up to his chest. Elias hauls him up into his arms anyway, stroking back and forth on the back of his son's neck with his thumb. The hallway isn't empty when he steps out into it, and Merrick will likely give all three of them shit for this later (separately, of course), but for now they just nod at each other.

He isn't old, but men his sons' age look more like boys every damn year.

David is nearly limp in his arms, and Elias doesn't bother resisting the urge to press his lips to a temple. Another swell of pure love nearly sweeps him off of his feet when he pries his shirt free from his eldest's loose grip as he lays him down in bed. Sheets up to the chest, for David; any higher and he starts feeling trapped. Logan stirs again, ever so slightly, and he hushes them both again. They settle, one melting into the mattress as the other curls into a loose ball, and Elias sighs.

It's time for bed.

It's a moment that stretches into eternity.

The room is quiet, the dim light of the hallway scarcely filtering in, and Elias could die of love, _for_ love, and be perfectly happy for it. There's nothing he wouldn't give them. His life was already theirs, from the very moment he first felt David kick, not even born yet.

"Love you," he whispers to sleeping ears.

"More than the sun, the moon, and all the stars."

The door clicks shut quietly, leaving his sons to sleep.

* * *

I'm not dead, as it turns out, but as an apology I've brought y'all some tender father-son content. Also, I didn't explicitly state it anywhere up there, but in my mind they're running an op out of a defunct hotel. Not to be mistaken for the one in Vegas, mind you, but I thought it'd be a convenient place to put a larger group of people.


End file.
